


Homecoming

by formalizing



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Established Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester, Heaven, M/M, Post-Episode: s15e20 Carry On, Post-Series, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:08:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27829480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/formalizing/pseuds/formalizing
Summary: “Why am I not surprised? All of Heaven laid out before us and Dean Winchester wants a backseat quickie.”
Relationships: Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester
Comments: 15
Kudos: 68





	Homecoming

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted [on Tumblr](https://all-these-formalities.tumblr.com/post/635479987136479232)

The first thing Sam does—once he’s taken a minute to adjust to being back in a body that isn’t aged and half-broken, riddled with arthritis and the lasting memory of old aches and pains—is to tangle his fingers in Dean’s shirt and pull him in for a kiss.

It’s a small thing, at first—an almost-hesitant press of lips, the uncertainty of decades apart slowing Sam’s movements. Then Dean grins, slides one hand back into Sam’s hair and wraps the other arm around his back to drag him in closer, parts Sam’s lips with his tongue like it’s been barely a moment since the last time they did this.

And for him, Sam supposes, it has been.

He doesn’t even realize he’s crying until Dean pulls back with a furrow of concern between his brows.

“Sam? Are you—”

“Just… don’t stop,” Sam pleads as he leans in for another kiss, and another after that.

Dean indulges him with a muffled chuckle against his lips, kisses him again and again like they’re a couple of high school kids just figuring out what their mouths are for.

“You do know we got all eternity to do this, don’t you?” Dean says when he finally withdraws again, licking at his kiss-red lower lip as he presses their foreheads together and cards his fingers through Sam’s hair.

Sam’s heart clenches as he thinks back to the last time they’d been this way—the blood and dirt smell of that barn somehow still fresh in his memory, terror-numb limbs and lungs constricting like _he_ was the one dying, barely able to force a breath in, watching his brother fade right before his eyes.

Laying one hand flat over where Dean’s heart is beating strong in his chest, Sam lets himself feel the steady thrum of it long enough that his own heartbeat starts to sync up.

“Hey,” Dean says after a long moment, covering Sam’s hand with his own. “It’s never gonna stop again, okay? Half a dozen times is about where I draw the line.”

The laugh he manages in response to Dean’s wry smile sounds like it’s a step away from a sob.

“Good to know we’ve got a limit, now.”

Dean squeezes Sam’s hand and doesn’t say anything to that.

“I love you, too, you know,” Sam says, looking up from his hand on Dean’s chest to meet his eyes as he says it, nodding like he has to affirm it even further. Dean has a soft look on his face, his lips still curved in that seemingly perpetual smile he wears here. “I know you already know that—I do. It’s just—it’s been one of my biggest regrets, ever since. That I didn’t… I should have said it back.”

“Sam—” Dean starts, like he’s planning to interrupt with reassurances.

“No, I know, but… I used to dream about that barn almost every night. How I could’ve saved you—if I’d just done one thing different, paid a little more attention. Or-or at least ways I could’ve gone with you. But it was so _fast._ And there was so much I didn’t get to say. Like how much I loved you, and I was so proud of you, too, because you’re such a hero—you are, even when you think you’re not, maybe especially then. That I’m so glad you came for me that night, at Stanford. I didn’t know it, not for a long time, but taking down that would-be robber in my apartment at 2 am—”  
  
“Not the way I remember it, but okay.”

“—I didn’t know that would be the start of the very best part of my life. Because it was, Dean. For all I thought I was on the right path, it turns out that every single year I spent with you—even when it was bad, even after Jessica, after dad, when it was Heaven and Hell and end of the world insane—I would go back and do them all over again. I would. Just to be ‘driving down crazy street, next to you.’”

Dean’s mouth quirks up in a half-smile at having his own words parroted back to him.

“Whatever happened to ‘no chick flick moments’, huh?” he says as he wipes a tear from Sam’s face with his thumb.

Sam snorts at that, finally puts some breathing room between them as he lifts his shaky hand from over Dean’s heart to punch him in the arm hard enough to make him wince.

“Jerk,” Sam mutters, swiping at his own face with the soft fabric of his sleeves to clear the tear tracks. “I’ve had _years_ to think about what I’d say when it was finally my turn. You got the last word for so long.”

That’s enough to give Dean pause, a pensive look settling over his face.

“Didn’t think about that, I guess,” he says. “Time here… it’s like the opposite of Hell. For me, it felt like a few hours, maybe a couple days—just a quick drive and… here you are.”

“A quick drive, huh?” Sam trails off for a second, laughs a little raggedly thinking over the decades that span between that barn and now—the number of ‘quick drives’ he took to mark each missed birthday in January. “Down there it was… well. I’ll tell you all about it one day.”

“How long’d you get, in the end?”

Sam smirks, tugs a thick strand of his newly-brown again hair forward to look at it.

“Let’s just say, this? Was a lot whiter. And these?” He holds his hands in front of him, looks at the backs of them—free of age spots or wrinkles, missing the tan line where his wedding ring used to sit, his own watch at his wrist instead of Dean’s old one, no longer shaking or sore. “They could barely hold a comb some days, forget about cocking a gun.”

Dean gives a low whistle, looks him up and down like he might be able to get the full picture of it just by looking at him as he appears now.

“You went full retirement home special, huh?” Sam tilts his head with a shrug. “Gotta be a Winchester record, man. S’all those salads. Should’ve ate more bacon—heart disease would’a got you home faster.”

“Idiot,” Sam mutters with a painfully fond smile. “I missed you.”

Dean’s eyes go a little soft for a moment before his grin takes on a mischievous edge.

“Yeah? Y’gonna show me how much you missed me?” he says with a salacious wiggle of his eyebrows as he raps his knuckles twice on the back door of the Impala.

Sam barks out a laugh.

“Why am I not surprised? All of Heaven laid out before us and Dean Winchester wants a backseat quickie.”

“Who said I was gonna make it quick?” Sam rolls his eyes and doesn’t even try to hide his smile as he lets himself be tugged closer by Dean’s finger hooked through one of his belt loops. “I can think of at least one thing I want laid out before me, and it sounds like I got a few missed years to make up for.”

“More than a few,” Sam says, shivering as Dean presses a kiss to the curve of his jaw, tilting his head to give him more access as he kisses his way down Sam’s neck.

Dean makes a considering sound as he tugs down the zip on Sam’s hoodie, gets a hand up under his tee and pressed warm and promising against the skin of his stomach. “Sure your heart can take it, old man?”

“Thought you said it was only a couple days for you?” Sam asks in a faux wondering tone as he slides a hand down Dean’s chest all the way to his belt and further still to cup the growing bulge in his jeans with a grin. “You that quick to forget that I’ve always been able to take everything you’ve got to give, big brother?”  
  
Dean cocks an eyebrow and sends a quick glance… well, heavenward, then looks back at Sam.

“Really? In full view of God, you’re gonna ‘big brother’ me right now?”

Dean’s tone’s teasing as the smirk on his face, but the reality of it still gives Sam a moment’s pause. He looks around in suspicion, frowning like he expects to see an angel peeking out from behind every tree.

“… Jack wouldn’t actually…?”

Dean bursts out laughing, the warm, joyful, bigger than life kind of laugh that Sam remembers filling the halls of the bunker years ago. Until now, he’s only been able to hear it in his very best dreams.

“If you think Jack didn’t already know what we got up to at night—” Dean tilts his head with a smug smile as he thinks back. “and sometimes the morning, or the middle of the afternoon—y’give him even less credit than I did.”

“Shut up,” Sam says with a somewhat sheepish glare. “You know what I mean.”

“Y’mean is he gonna be some heavenly cock-block, popping up like a kid catching mommy and daddy when they’re busy makin’ him a baby brother?” Sam can feel a blush burning on his cheeks, and Dean’s grin just widens. “Never know. But I’d wager he’s probably got more important things going on nowadays, don’t y’think?”

“I think you’re the _worst_.”

“Try that again when you _didn’t_ just get done pouring your heart out about how much you love and missed me. You ain’t got a leg to stand on.”

“Oh, fuck you.”

“Sure, but you first,” Dean just seems pleased when Sam rolls his eyes at that. “And besides, even if he did—even if a whole _flock_ of new feathery freaks showed up to take a peek—I don’t care. I really don’t, Sam. I’m not gonna spend one more _second_ keeping my hands to myself or holding back when all I wanna do is kiss you—”

He does just that, backing Sam into the hard line of the Impala as he tangles a hand in his hair and kisses him until he’s going weak in the knees.

“—and touch you—”

He entwines the fingers of his free hand with one of Sam’s, presses the knuckle of his thumb into the palm that used to have that scar like he knows Sam still uses that as a marker for what’s real and what’s not sometimes.

“—and make sure you forget everything but my name.”

Dean presses in close, gets a knee between Sam’s legs as he sets the teasing edge of teeth to his neck, humming in satisfaction when Sam rocks up against him and obligingly groans, “ _Dean_.”

Dean pulls back a bit with another quick kiss, still so close they’re sharing air, but far enough his eyes can scan Sam’s flushed face like he’s somehow seeing it for the first time.

“If this is supposed to be, what? Some kind of ‘promised land’?” he brushes Sam’s hair back from his face, lingering a bit where the hint of white still peeks through. “Well. We kept our promises, didn’t we?”

Sam presses his free hand against the spot on Dean’s midsection where he’d held Dean’s own bloodied hands that very last time in silent agreement.

Dean maneuvers them around so he can open the car door with a creak of the hinges that echoes in the stillness all around them—brash and loud the way Baby’s always been.

“So what say we give you a proper… home _coming_?” Dean says as he gestures to the backseat with a flourish of his hand.

It’s an _awful_ joke, but Sam can’t help the laugh that bubbles up in his chest as he climbs into the backseat, dragging Dean along by the hem of his shirt when he doesn’t move quickly enough.

Dean laughs with him, even as he nearly smacks his head against the roof of the car tumbling in beside him.

“Easy, tiger,” Dean murmurs, pressing Sam back against the bench seats they spent the better part of their childhood on. “We got time.”

Tucked safely between the comforting weight of his brother above him and the familiar smell of the Impala’s leather below, Sam lets out a breath he feels like he’s been holding for half a lifetime.


End file.
